Worry woke me up at 1 am. Not just a fleeting thought but the most intense worry I have ever felt. It was a fullness in my chest. It burned and tingled in my nerve endings. I flopped around trying to rid myself of it as it was consuming. But God…

I know that fear is not of the Lord, so I prayed. I was worried about one specific thing and in the moment, it confused me. I know that fear is not of the Lord but I also know that we are convicted about different things at different times and in that moment, it was hard to tell the difference.

I don’t want to give more power to my fear by reviving it here but to give you an idea… the fear was pouring it’s hot salt in my most open and visible wounds of the day. It was about my child and his future and all the things I can never control. And in my cries to the Lord, telling Him that I KNOW this is not of Him, my fears were replaced…one. By. One. In only a way that God can do.

I pushed my burden towards God. I know it was in my mind but if it weren’t the middle of the night and if my sleeping husband wasn’t there looking like a mound of things I could push, I would have physically slid *something* off my bed as if I was actually shoveling my problems into the Lord’s open hands.

And I slept. Because God provides. When I woke again at 4 am, immediately remembering my pain, I had to get out of bed and fill that dark space with hope. As a creative, I journal and write out thoughts to process them. My journal and my Bible live side-by-side and it was exactly the dynamic duo I needed this worrisome morn.

I have a hard time remembering where things are in the Bible so I googled “bible verses worry” and found a site that listed 30. Being a paper & ink kinda girl, I looked each one up (context is important) and wrote down the ones that whispered loudest to me. I like to make lists when the chaos is swirling in my brain. This list felt like an anchor for my spinning thoughts, bringing me down with a soft thud and halting me in the middle of my self-created storm. Peace.

I sought the Lord and He answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Prov 34:4